• Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    One of the running themes on the show is basically “work sucks but there’s nothing you can do about it”.

    There’s an episode where Francis has to work at Lois’ job to help with inventory and Craig is in charge and is being extra incompetent. You’d figure with all of the opposition Francis organizes at military school that he’d be able to easily handle Craig and start a union or something. Instead, when everyone else decides to just give up and go home after they lose the competition to get it done before another store in the area, Francis is fighting to get everyone to finish what they started.

    I don’t think any of the times when the show has a “character vs their employer” conflict works out in a way where the character wins. The closest I can think of is when Lois has a conflict with a manager that fired her wrongly, but even that one isn’t resolved in a great way because his downfall comes from Lois telling him she has dirt on him but would never tell anyone about it and the rest of the staff overhears and does tell. So it’s got a bit of “Lois is good because she keeps her boss’ secrets” mixed in with the messaging.

    It sucks because it’s otherwise such a well made show. Every character on the show sucks for some reason, but it doesn’t just let them get away with it. Unless it’s an employer or cop, at which point the message pivots to “it sucks but there’s nothing anyone can do about it other than bitch”.

    • aredditimmigrant
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      3 months ago

      I’m not sure if this is supposed to support or counter my point.

      It sounds like you’re supporting it because it’s brainwashing you to think, “meh. Work sucks. Just deal with it and don’t try to improve it”

      It reminded me of another point that in one episode when Hals company is trying to frame him for something the big wigs did… you find out that he’s never worked a friday in years. So him lacking commitment to try his hardest actually works in his favor. … As well as the fact that he matters so little that nobody noticed.